Tragic Disaster

White Moon Cafeteria, Sumida City, Tokyo
July 27th
3:15 PM

The cafeteria was quite quiet, it was three in the afternoon, so it was calm, only a few customers, one was a grandmother who was enjoying talking with her daughter, a group of friends, and two schoolgirls, all of them were at the entrance and had already been served, for this reason, everyone in the store was simply watching the time pass, even Levia was sleeping again at the bottom of the fish tank, I, on the other hand, was at the near table playing with my portable console, since I had nothing to do either. My mother was simply at the counter talking to Saeko about whether to get more things to decorate or see what other improvements could be made to the store.

My phone rang for a second, I took it out of my pocket to see it, it was a message from Haru, she wanted to see if I was still in Japan to try to meet one day and make an outing between friends, this did not call my attention. But just when I was thinking about what excuse to put a little water fell on my head, then a little more next to me, I turned to look at what the fuck Levia was doing, but she was still at the bottom of the fish tank, she opened her eyes suddenly and started to swim up. I was still wondering what was happening to her when I realized why, my body lost balance and I fell to the ground, all the windows started to rumble, the lights shook sideways, the ground started to shake more and more.

"Earthquake!" someone shouted.

"Oh Fuck"
"Ok, everybody out please"
"Quickly and calm!"
"Tamamo help the old lady  out"
"Lisa help me get Levia out of the water tank"
"Everyone else helps with the evacuation!".

As the most experienced person in action situations, I started to give orders immediately to everyone, because reacting quickly to an emergency is what saves lives.

People listened to what I told them and came out to the street one by one, my mother also helped to get the customers out. Everyone reacted calmly to the situation, except for Levia who was probably experiencing her first earthquake on the surface, the poor mermaid was so terrified that she swam to the bottom and taking an enormous momentum was able to throw herself out of the tank without anyone's help, thank goodness I wasn't where she fell. Then Lisa grabbed her by the waist and I the back of her tail and the three of us got out of the store as well. We joined the others where everyone was talking, still with the ground still moving.

"Wow, it's a strong one"
"About what? 7 or 8 magnitude?"

"The ground is moving!"
"It's the end! We're all dead!"

"Levia please relax"
"It is something that happens from time to time up here, it is a normal phenomenon"
"It has already happened many times before"

"It also seems to be quite long"

"Charlotte!"

"Yes, Dad?"

"I want you to go to the house and see if your mother Tifa and Maria are all right, okay?"
"Thank you"

"Okay"

"The store can stand to move a little, can't it?" Saeko asked worriedly.

"Well, the landlord told me that the building was modern and I checked the documents myself"
"It shouldn't collapse, on paper"

"Damn, it's already been a full minute"
"This is not good"
"Someone is going to have a very long bad day"

"I hope not"
"Besides, you never know"
"Remember that 7.6 earthquake in Costa Rica?"
"It also lasted more than a minute and still nothing happened in the entire country"

"And how could I forget"
"That day I took a math test on my first round of High school"
"Dad picked me up and took me to the doctor to see if they could remove the cast from my arm"
"I was in the basement of that 200-year-old hospital when it started"
"We got horribly lost in there and by the time I got to the surface it was over."
"I was really thankful that nothing happened that day"
"I'm sure that otherwise, my name would have been at the top of the list"

"Kasumi, my dear, do you have any information?"

"For safety reasons, the measuring instruments do not release the information until the earthquake is over"
"The information is handled in physical form and then sent by telephone to news broadcasters"
"This is one of the few cases where it is better to turn on the TV or radio"

Little by little, and after almost two full minutes, the earthquake began to weaken until it disappeared. Little by little, and after almost two full minutes, the tremor began to weaken until it disappeared. The street was full of people from everywhere that had also come out because of the emergency, everyone was talking about what happened, and many others took out their phones and started to record. Lisa went inside the shadow of the building and went to bring Levia's clothes to at least hide her tail from the public that was forming. The city was intact as far as I could see, some things had fallen as was logical, but nothing serious, everything seemed in order, just a minor shock. 

"All right, what now?"

"Well I can't open the store until I check that everything is ok and clean everything up"
"So it looks like this is as far as we'll be taking customers for the day"

"Okay then Mrs. Adelis"
"Dear customers as you can see this is an unexpected situation so we are forced to close today to ensure your safety and a pleasant experience on your next visit."
"We are sorry for the inconvenience caused"
"As a way of apologizing, we will not charge you for your orders"
"Thank you very much for visiting our cafeteria and we hope to see you again soon"

"Wow, Saeko really knows how to handle these topics with delicacy"

After the people started to calm down a bit they started to go home little by little. We went back inside the store to see what had been damaged, at first glance several things were on the floor, plates, and food mainly, also one of the lamps fell from the ceiling, but nothing too serious. The biggest mess was Levia's water tank which had overflowed a lot of water and there was a big puddle on the floor that we had to clean up and the table she fell on when she jumped. Talking about the mermaid we sat her in one of the big armchairs by the wall while the rest of us cleaned up. My mother turned the TV back on and put on the news to try to get some information about what had happened. It wasn't until then that we understood the true level of catastrophe that had happened.

Earthquakes of magnitude 8.7 shook all of Japan, the epicenter was the Okinawa region.

The news is showing videos of the destruction that reporters were able to capture as they tried to get to safety, as several buildings collapsed live. People were desperately trying to rescue those who were trapped in the rubble, several fires were reported in some buildings and the fire was beginning to be seen in the distance. But that was not the worst yet, the reporters interrupted the news because they had to give a much more important one, a Tsunami warning for the whole country, but especially for the Okinawa islands region because a wave of at least 10 meters would hit in just minutes. The terror and panic was overwhelming on the faces of the people who appeared on TV running for their lives. My mother was praying as she watched the news.

We were all shocked, watching the television without looking away for a moment. People were trying to rescue as many people as they could from the initial earthquake and then running as fast as they could to high ground to try to get to safety. An aerial shot from a helicopter recorded the arrival of the fatal tsunami that destroyed everything in its path, no one could do anything to stop it, you could see how it took everything in its path, boats, cars, houses, people. The damage was innumerable and terrible, seeing it live only served to accentuate the terrible upset

Some reporters could be seen on the rooftops of buildings still trying for some reason to describe what they were seeing, one of them even helped to pull out people who were swimming and clinging nearby trying to save themselves somehow. We could do nothing but watch it all happen. Even Tamamo was stunned, staring intently at the TV while her hand covered her mouth, as she almost said that even she couldn't believe that what was happening was real.

But it seemed that misfortunes never came alone, as another important report came in, an aftershock produced by the first earthquake triggered another one in the north, in the Hokkaidō region. Another 7.7 earthquake just occurred and created several landslides. It was not a good day for all of Japan, the earth had taken it personally against this country for some reason. There was still no alarm for a tsunami but it was probably only a matter of time before it happened too. Outside the store, on the street people were talking about what had happened, they too looked on in disbelief at the huge tragedy that was unfolding. There were even cries of panic in a region relatively safe as Tokyo had.

By the time we realized it was getting dark outside, but we just couldn't take our eyes off the TV. We finished packing up and closed the store tightly before hurrying back to our house to continue watching the news. It seemed that the main island of Okinawa received the most damage from the earthquake, its city was almost completely destroyed, but Hokkaidō was not far behind either. It was hard to believe that both the north and the south had been so badly hit by nature.

My mother's cell phone received a call, she looked at the number first before answering, took a breath and answered with a deep and serious greeting. I knew that this was not a normal call, it had to be something related to the earthquake somehow, and somehow it would end up with me doing something stupid, but it was impossible to say what it would be for now. What I was sure of was that I wanted to kill whoever was on the other end of that phone.

My mother hung up a little annoyed but also excited for some reason.

"Alright girls, I need you to pack your bags as we are leaving for Okinawa tomorrow morning"
"Little luggage please, this is not a tourist trip as you can imagine"

"What? Why?"
"For the first time, it was not us!"

"Humanitarian aid"
"U.S. military will do all it can to help Japan"
"Okinawa is home to one of the largest military bases in the Pacific"
"But due to the magnitude of the disaster they will not be able to cope, so almost all personnel in Japan will be deployed to Okinawa to assist in search and rescue and part of the recovery effort"
"Both  the Carrier Strike Group 5 and personnel from Akasaka Press Center will be deployed there to assist"
"In this way, while we take care of the south, the Japanese government will be able to focus its rescue efforts on the north"

"Ok, that's all great, excellent even"
"But why us?"

"Because I also want to go and help"
"Besides, we can make a difference"
"Isn't Tamamo a Japanese Goddess to begin with!"
"......"
"And by the way, since Japan signed the Alliance integration agreement, they are now expecting to receive help as well"
"And while we're at it, I'll make sure everything goes as smoothly as possible so as not to make them look bad"

"Evil goddess, remember that part"
"And what a damned timing they have, signing that agreement and almost immediately demanding help"

"Well, it's a good thing they are so lucky"
"Come on, it doesn't cost anything to help people"

"Don't use that against me!"
"I have sacrificed a lot, I have lost many people, my sanity, I have been shot too many times and died twice for that nonsense!"
"If there is anyone exempt from helping others it is me!"
"This was my first vacation in 20 years!"

"And you won't be able to go anywhere anyway because the whole country will be busy"
"Surely you can wait a little longer"

"....."
"Damn, okay, it's fine."
"But this is going to cost you or the government"
"I'm going to start charging for my work"

And with that, we all started packing our bags to make our trip to the earthquake epicenter and try to help as many people as possible. Some people like my sister thought they would visit the beach. While I was preparing all my assault gear, as it was going to be a busy days without a doubt. From all the military equipment that my previous adventures had donated to me, to disarming my weapons and checking that my weapons were ready in case some idiot had a funny idea. Even if it wasn't a war zone, you never know what could happen in a place that had taken such a level of damage, so it was better to be ahead of the game.